For Jay Martello, selling textbooks back to bookstores at the end of each semester isn’t worth the hassle when he considered how much he’d actually get paid back.
The graduate student said he prefers to buy his books and save them to hopefully sell to another student in his graduate program.
But new research from bigwords.com, a price comparison website for textbook sales, suggests students who buy and sell their textbooks back to wholesalers could save about $60 per textbook compared to students who rent their books, said Jeff Sherwood, founder of bigwords.com.
Sherwood said in the past few years, he has noticed users on his website renting textbooks, rather than buying and selling back, and he wanted to find the cheapest way overall to get textbooks.
“We took the 1,000 most popular titles on bigwords.com, and we took their lowest semester rental price and compared it to what a student would pay overall if they purchased the cheapest copy,” he said. “What we found is that it was a lot cheaper to buy and sell … than to rent those books.”
Sherwood said although many students might think rentals are cheaper up front, it is important to keep in mind that students can’t sell back those books at the end of the semester.
Tom Muth, general manager and owner of Collegeville Textbook Company, 321 E. Grand River Ave., said MSU students are fortunate to have three textbook shops on the same street, allowing them the convenience of walking to each one to check out the deals before making a purchase, and they should take advantage of that.
When renting became popular in the textbook market, Muth said he considered making it an option for his customers, but after doing the math, he found that it wouldn’t be cost-effective for students.
Instead, his store does a guaranteed buyback program, which is available for about 20 to 40 percent of the books the store sells. When a student buys a textbook, if it has a buyback sticker on it, they can return the book at the end of the semester for at least 50 percent of the price of the book, he said.
“Don’t just look for whatever is the cheapest price you see for the rental,” Muth said. “Shop around and do the math.”
But with the price comparison site bigwords.com, Sherwood said students can compare rental and buying and selling prices for their textbooks all on one website.
Still, Martello said he would not use such a site, as he prefers to shop on sites like amazon.com to buy his textbooks.
“I try to find them online, but if I can’t, I buy them in the store,” Martello said.
“You really don’t know what the price of the books are. You just kind of have to shop around until you find a good deal.”
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